Africa Oil & Gas: Gabon extends bid deadline for deepwater licensing round

Gabon’s Direction Generale des Hydrocarbures (DGH) has announced that the 11th Licensing Round for deepwater blocks has been extended to April 29 2016. The round was formally opened on October 27 2015 by His Excellency, Minister for Petroleum and Hydrocarbons, Mr. Etienne Dieudonné Ngoubou, at the 22nd Africa Oil Week conference in Cape Town South Africa. The original closing date for applications was March 31 2016.

The DGH said that the new deadline for bid submissions would give interested companies an extra month to evaluate the anticipated update to the fiscal terms by the DGH due to be announced in the first week of April 2016.

The deep water of Gabon has significant unexplored potential within a structurally complex setting, particularly in the pre-salt section. In response to the exploration challenges, CGG was appointed to advise the Gabonese Republic on the promotion of the 11th Licensing Round and has worked directly with the Ministry to acquire over 25,000 km2 of new 3D BroadSeis multi-client seismic data as part of an integrated geoscience program to support it.

The new survey will enable better imaging of this exciting and underexplored area, and covers areas downdip and adjacent to recent pre-Aptian salt discoveries, such as Leopard, Diaman, Ruche and Tortue. It will benefit from integrated gravity and magnetic interpretation to enhance the pre-salt imaging and additional, complementary datasets including offshore hydrocarbon seeps and a full geological prospectivity report is available.